Affiliates are the first beneficiaries of custom TinyURLs. Earlier this month, the link shortening service, TinyURL.com, added the capability to customize a URL, effectively letting you replace the usual nonsensical combination of letters and numbers with real words - a long overdue feature which had already been adopted by other services, including bit.ly. At the time, in my coverage of the news, I said it would help people trust URLs, rather than finding themselves sent to a malware site. But, as he commonly does, Allen Stern of CenterNetworks accurately picked apart my theory, correctly saying that despite the customization options, readers could still point any old URL to any old site. (See: TinyURL Adds Custom URLs; Is This Exciting or What?)Despite my best intentions, Allen was right and I was wrong. So, eager to lead with my chin again, I thought I'd learn from Allen's guidance and see how well brands did in securing their own names, or if smart squatters grabbed hot brand names to hijack traffic. Here are a few I checked out.
| TinyURL | Actual URL |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/amazon | http://blogs.zdnet.com/Berlind/?p=917 |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/bestbuy | http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8 &keywords=bestbuy (Custom referral by techlist.com) |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/centernetworks | http://www.centernetworks.com |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/dell | http://www.pornstarguru.com/page.php? x=183137&m=1 |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/digg | http://www.digg.com |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/facebook | http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8 &keywords=facebook (Custom referral by techlist.com) |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/friendfeed | http://friendfeed.com/jigarme |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/fujitsu | http://www.computers.us.fujitsu.com/Consumer.php (Custom referral by Affiliate) |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/google | http://www.google.com |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/hitachi | http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/ menuitem.8027a91c954924ae4bda9f30eac4f0a0/ |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/ibm | http://www.rediff.com/entertai/2002 /jun/28varma.htm |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/iphone | http://www.tuaw.com/2008/07/03/international-iphone-pricing-guide/ |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/linkedin | http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8 &keywords=linkedin (Custom referral by techlist.com) |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/mashable | http://www.sedoparking.com/ wwwtext-link-ads.com |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/microsoft | http://www.microsoft.com |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/myspace | http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8 &keywords=myspace (Custom referral by techlist.com) |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/orkut | http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8 &keywords=orkut (Custom referral by techlist.com) |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/reddit | http://www.reddit.com |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/rediff | http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8 &keywords=rediff (Custom referral by techlist.com) |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/socialthing | http://www.friendfeed.com |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/stumbleupon | http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8 &keywords=stumbleupon (Custom referral by techlist.com) |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/techcrunch | http://www.techmeme.com |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/techmeme | http://www.bitgain.com/techmeme |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/valleywag | http://valleywag.com/5024969/viacom-unleashes-pr -thunder-on-san-franciscos-press-corps |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/yahoo | http://www.creators.com/comics_show.cfm?comicname=oc |
| http://www.tinyurl.com/youtube | http://www.youtube.com |
As you can see, entrepreneurial Amazon.com affiliates grabbed the aliases for a number of tech sites, from Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace to Best Buy. Clicking these undoubtedly gives the squatter a kick-back if you purchase any of the books from Amazon.com, so watch your cookies. Some other folks clearly thought it was funny to point the TechCrunch alias to Techmeme, and another from SocialThing to FriendFeed. Meanwhile, Jigar Mehta is the "lucky" recipient of the FriendFeed TinyURL himself.
Brands that did manage to get their own TinyURLs in time included Digg, Google and Microsoft, while interestingly, TinyURL didn't have any information on Apple, Blackberry or others, neither offering the ability to create a new URL with those aliases, or to preview them, so they appear to have been whacked from the database. I had naively hoped that by opening up custom TinyURLs, people could increase their trust of these Web shortcuts, and I've been using them myself to announce new posts, but for the typical cyber scammers out there, it just opened up a new field of opportunity for redirection and annoyance. It's no wonder that Edelman's Steve Rubel sent an internal note to the company telling the PR agency to warn clients and get them to snap up their own TinyURLs before it was too late.